Three of Swords (Rider Waite Tarot)
First Impressions
There’s not much original in this card. Basically if it has scenic pips, if you’ve seen one Three of Swords you’ve seen ‘em all. Big red valentine heart floating in a dark sky (sometimes gloomy, sometimes just gray and raining, clouds showing in the background as here), pierced by three downthrust swords. It started as far back as the eccentric Sola-Busca deck, was revived by Pamela Colman Smith, and survives to this day. I would guess that it’s up there with the Eight of Wands as the most tired and done-to-death card there is. There’s not often a lot original done with it. Very few modern deck creators do anything new with them. But that doesn’t detract from the effectiveness of the image. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Over the top as the picture may be, it depicts heartache very well. It makes me think of those silent film heroines swooning in black and white to the floor or a conveniently soft and nearby divan, fainting all over the place with one hand clutching her (presumably broken) heart while the back of the other hand presses against her forehead.
So what is there to say? It’s a picture of misery, of heartache, of crying in the rain. Not much to add to that. It’s a sad card, a “look at me, look at how sad I am, waah, waah” kind of card.
First instinct when looking at this is that “Well, gee, the heart is a symbol of emotion, the Swords are intellectual not emotional, it doesn’t really belong, does it?” Well, minus the “gee” that was my thought anyway. But look at the bulk of the Swords cards, and unhappy emotion is at the base of their interpretation. Look at the wary resignation of the Two, the heartache of the Three, the shame of defeat (or glee of triumph) of the Five, and so on. So maybe a heart isn’t so misplaced after all.
Creator’s Notes
Waite says:
Waite said:
Three Swords piercing a heart, cloud and rain behind.
Well worth looking it up, don’t you think?
Others’ Interpretations
Waite again:
Waite said:
Divinatory Meanings: Removal, absence, delay, division, rupture, dispersion, and all that the design signifies naturally, being to simple and obvious to call for specific enumeration.
Well, if I didn’t agree that it was so obvious, I’d be mad at this further example of Waite’s snottiness … but this time he‘s not far wrong. It‘s a stabbed heart, no gray area there, you‘d say. Further elaboration on it very well might be superfluous.
Waite said:
Reversed: mental alienation, error, loss, distraction, disorder, confusion.
Joan Bunning says:
Bunning said:
[…]In readings, the Three of Swords often represents the nasty little curve balls that life can throw sometimes. Betrayal, abandonment, rejection, separation, a reversal of fortune. These hurts are painful because they hit you when you least expect them. If you have drawn this card, you may know what it refers to, but if not, the Three of Swords is a valuable warning. It is likely there is something amiss in your life that you are unaware of or unwilling to acknowledge. Curve balls hit us when we're looking the other way. Examine your situation carefully. Talk to the people in your life. Don't take anything for granted. Listen to your inner voice; it will help you locate the problem.
It is also possible that you are contemplating hurting someone else. With this card I think it is important to remember that each of us is capable of cruelty. We're all human, and we all make mistakes, sometimes serious ones. In the end, all we can do is trust in the goodness of life and try to live up to that ideal. When you slip, forgive yourself, and try to forgive others in turn, but, even better, head off trouble before it arrives.
Symbols and Attributes
Astrologically the Three of Swords is ruled by Saturn in Libra. Libra, as we’ve found before, is a very ordered sign that emphasizes harmony and balance. And Saturn is a planet ruled by the element of Earth; its influence brings structure and temporal (earthly) authority. But … where is the harmony, the structure, in this picture? I’m thinking that this is due to the elemental incompatibility of these two astrological influences. Think about it: Libra is an Air sign, ruled by the swift-moving and changeable wind. It’s cerebral and fast. Saturn is an Earth planet, ruled by the stolid and unchanging ground. It’s concerned with material matters and does not move quickly (if at all) or change without significant impetus to do so. So when the unstoppable force of Libra meets the immovable object of Saturn, what happens? Of course there’s conflict, confusion; of course the harmony and structure would be lost in the confusion!
But one thing that I
do like is that Saturn as a planet is sometimes referred to as the “Lord of Karma” (don’t look for scholarly references; I read that on the back of a booklet of Zodiac-themed postage stamps
). That’s great, just terrific, I think. Isn’t the whole suit of Swords about karma in its most impartial and retributory form? Karma’s a bitch, you know. So … I see it as a mix of the justice of Libra and the karma of Saturn. It’s a fine point. Justice seems to deal more with the results, whereas karma focuses on
how doing thing A leads to thing B happening as a result. Trawling around the internet, I found many seem to view karma as what
does happen as a result of your actions, and justice as what
should happen. Me, I see karma as more forgiving than justice, but I guess the mix of the two makes for a varied view in the Three of Swords.
Numerological this card is a three; three is the number of harmony and creation. Again, I don’t see it in this image. Combine the Three-ness with the Air-ness, the conflict of the suit of Swords, and I see an unhappy creation: the formation or origin of more misery, more worry, more strife. No wonder the Golden Dawn referred to the Three of Swords as the “Lord of Sorrow”.
Interesting for this coldly intellectual, dispassionate suit of Swords, that the central image of this card is a big red valentine heart. More the area of the suit of Cups, you might think. But no, there it is, large as life. Why? Well, for a start, the most obvious connection is that of the Sola-Busca. A northern Italian deck from the end of the fifteenth century, this was probably the first deck to have something resembling illustrated pips as we know them today (ie, something more than just the appropriate number of suit elements with a little bit of decorative embellishment). The Three of Swords from that deck, with its weird and wonderful illustrated pips that apparently were linked to Renaissance alchemy (or so says Tarotpedia) and its mythological trumps and court cards, was on display at the British Museum at around the same time as the Rider Waite Tarot’s creation. And it depicts a plump and lush red heart pierced by three decorative looking swords. Can’t be a coincidence. But who decided to base this one on that template - Waite, or Colman Smith? Good question. Popular opinion gives the credit to Pamela Colman Smith, as the artist and a visitor to the British Museum at the time.l but then it still begs the question: why the heart? After all, she didn’t replicate each and every card from that old pack, for all that she did seem to draw inspiration from it from time to time. So we’re back where we started.
Well, a heart is red. The colour of life’s blood and of energy. And as the mechanism that ensures blood is supplied to all parts of the human body, it’s a driving and vital force. But it’s also the organ traditionally associated with love and human emotion, romanticized by valentines and adorable little arrow-toting diapered cupids. All very pretty. Now. Stab it with three long swords - poke, poke, poke - and leave them protruding. Not so pretty now, is it? So it’s time to look at these sharp pointy objects and what
they mean. In the Tarot, Swords as a suit emblem embody the element of Air. And that element’s attributes are those of intellect, communication and clarity. So it has been suggested that this image is about getting to the heart of the matter. Cutting through the extraneous stuff to get to the most important. But there’s also the more negative side of this suit: that of conflict and strife, of words that cut to the quick. Words can wound, can cut deeper than swords. So maybe the emotional heart
does belong here, even if it is referring to the saddest of emotions.
I’m not a Catholic, but many who are have pointed out the similarity between the image on the Three of Swords and the Immaculate Heart of Mary from religious pictures and statues and holy cards. To be honest, I’d thought first it referred to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, but wikipedia points out that the latter is a heart in flames, whereas the former is the one pierced by a sword and with seven wounds. I told you I wasn’t Catholic! The seven wounds refer to the Seven Sorrows of Mary, so it would certainly apply here; remember the Golden Dawn title for the card! (There’s supposed to be another sacred heart of some kind or another showing the three nails of the Crucifixion; but I can’t find it at the moment.)
Curiously, in the Rider Waite version and indeed in most versions based on the Rider Waite Tarot, the swords are thrust right through the meatiest part of the heart, yet there’s no blood. While the pain is sharp, it’s not fatal. If we look at it in terms of the Swords representing communication, the childhood adage comes to mind: “sticks and stones may break my bones, but names [or words] will never hurt me.” It hurts, but you’ll recover. You’ll get over it. In some versions of this card (the Robin Wood, for example) there is rain dripping off the tips of the swords, illustrating the fact that while emotions (tears, hinted at by the dripping rainwater) can make it seem worse than it is, there is in fact no
physical harm done.
The background of gray sky, clouds and rain is also interesting. First, it emphasizes a rather bleak and gloomy outlook and throws the emotional upset and heartache into sharp relief. Second, the gray of the sky is a mix between black and white; as such it represents neutrality. It’s impartial, this heartache, nothing personal. For all the good that does, it’s a cold comfort. And the rain, well, as water dripping down it resembles tears. And at the risk of channeling Waite at his snidest, do I really need to explain that?
It represents the grief and heartache that the stabbed heart shows. Frankly it’s a bit of overkill, but it’s nicely atmospheric without being
too over the top. And finally, look at the clouds. As a blend of air and water, I see a certain amount of incompatibility between the elements that could certainly contribute to a sense of imbalance in this card. A conflict between the emotionality of the Water and the dispassionate intellect of the Air. A nice little meteorological underlining of how the two meet in this card.
My Interpretations
So to me the Three of Swords is still pretty much what I thought it was before: the on-the-surface interpretation of heartache and grief and words that hurt still stand up to further scrutiny. It’s a card of gloom and hurt, of emotional pain that darkens the horizon and clouds everything.
Rachel Pollack said in
Seventy Eight Degrees of Wisdom that the way to move on is to not try and block or push away the pain, but to accept it into your heart and thus be able to move on from it. And that is perhaps the one silver lining to this gray storm cloud.
) and points out that all three swords are tinted with the green of Libra. He also points out that this card is Binah in Yetzirah and that Binah is overwhelming – the stormy sea, he says (I had immediately assumed it was sky and clouds until I read Frieda’s notes. but whatever it is, it certainly is overwhelming and quite threatening.) He says that Binah here is Aima – the Dark Sterile Mother.